The SEC is the biggest baddest conference around and they have earned that title. The League have won so many championships in a row it is hard to keep track and have to be an odds on favourite again as they enter this season with a high number of highly ranked teams.
The ACC should have a fascinating season in 2013. There are a number of true contenders as you can see below and they have some great matches with their geographical big brother the SEC, which could really shake up the way things look at the top of the polls this season.
The Big 12 should be one of the most competitive conferences in the nation this season. Usually a conference has one or maybe two legit contenders but this year in the B12 there are 4 programs that could reasonably walk away with the title.
The Pac-12 has been a top-heavy conference during the past few seasons, and while that theme should hold true in 2013, the middle-of-the-pack squads have started to close the gap just a bit. Last year’s Pac-12 champs were the Stanford Cardinal from the North Division.
The Big Ten Conference will have a completely different look next year, but it is the Legends and Leaders once again this season. Wisconsin and Nebraska met in the Big Ten Championship game last season. Ohio State finished the 2012 season undefeated, but they were ineligible for postseason play. Penn State is the only team ineligible for postseason action this year.
Like many conferences, the Sun Belt has a totally different look in 2013. Florida International, Florida Atlantic, MTSU, and North Texas left the conference after last season. Texas State and Georgia State were added to the Sun Belt, so the team now has eight teams.
Conference USA is getting bigger. The conference picked up some new teams and has now gone to an East and West division format. There are 14 teams in the conference as a whole, and each division will have seven teams.
The Mid-American Conference is one of the best “mid-major” football conferences in the nation. Northern Illinois from the MAC went to a BCS bowl last year, and this conference has a history of pulling off upsets against the major conference schools.
There is no conference that has had as much movement of teams as the American Athletic Conference, formerly the Big East. This year the league still has its hooks in last year’s winner, Louisville, while welcoming a host of newcomers from Conference USA.
It has been a bit of a revolving door in the Mountain West in light of all the recent realignment of teams in the conference.
This season, Nevada, Fresno State, and Hawaii will begin play in the MWC after leaving the Western Athletic Conference, but last season’s defending champion, TCU has moved onto the Big 12.
The face of Conference-USA will change dramatically heading into the 2013 football season, with a number of teams rotating in-and-out of the lineup, but for this year things remain the same for the 12-team mid-major.
The Southeastern Conference has won the last six BCS national titles and this year should be no exception with three teams in Bovada’s top-seven favorites to win this season’s championship. The following is a look at the top contenders in the conference along with their current odds to take home this year’s SEC title.
The PAC-10 grew into the PAC-12 last season with the addition of Utah and Colorado. The 12-team conference realigned itself into two divisions, South and North, which added a title game at the end of the season. Oregon took the crown last year by defeating UCLA 49-31 in the first ever PAC-12 Championship.
The Big 12 enters the 2012 football season with the same number of teams it ended last year with, but the entire face of the conference has changed. The perennial Big 12 powers remain intact, but both Missouri and Texas A&M have jumped-ship for the SEC.
The Big Ten expanded to 12 teams in 2011 with the addition of Nebraska. This finally allowed the conference to form two separate divisions; the Legends and Leaders.
As the landscape in college football continues to move from six majors to just four power conferences, the Big East is clearly one of the two that finds itself on the outside looking in.
